Kuzul

The Boston Red Sox have traded infielder Yamaico Navarro and pitching prospect Kendal Volz for Kansas City infielder Mike Aviles.

On the surface, it’s a bit of an odd move, as Aviles is going through a difficult 2011.  His slash line of .222/.261/.395 is brutal to look at, and the Royals only recently recalled him from AAA after his poor performance earned him an option to the minors.

Boston must like his versatility. Aviles can play third base or either of the middle positions, though his 2011 UZR is minus-0.8 according to Fangraphs.  

Aviles’ best year came in 2008 when he posted and .834 OPS in 102 games with Kansas City.  He also managed an 11.1 UZR that season at shortstop.  

Since then, however, his development has stalled.  His career path makes the trade a little surprising. It’s unclear what the team sees in Aviles that makes him preferable to Boston’s existing options.

One of those was Navarro, who now heads to K.C.  The Red Sox are content to give up on the 23-year-old utility man, who hasn’t progressed as the organization had hoped.  Through 16 big league games in 2011, he posted a .626 OPS.  

His numbers at AAA Pawtucket were somewhat more respectable (.831 through 34 games), but the Sox obviously didn’t see him contributing in the near future.

The right-handed Volz compiled a 3.33 ERA and a 1.05 WHIP in 51.1 innings with High A Salem this year.  Despite those nice numbers, he’s not on the organization’s top 20 prospects.

Still, it seems like Boston just gave up a fair amount of potential for very little return.  Other than providing depth at multiple spots, Aviles adds little to the team.  

Were he an excellent defender, the swap might have made more sense, but this has the distinct feeling of a throwaway trade.

If the Sox are banking on a recurrence of vintage 2008 Aviles, they’d better be prepared for disappointment.  And to send a pair of 23-year-olds packing seems rather rash given the team’s needs.

The obvious but limited upside is his ability to man shortstop, a perennial sore spot in Boston.

At best this trade is a C, and that’s only if Aviles improves on his first-half struggles. 

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Larry Wayne Jones has been playing for the Atlanta Braves since 1993.  Set to turn 39 on April 24, the man you all know as “Chipper” is in his 18th season with the same club—that alone is noteworthy.

But on Friday, Jones added to his already impressive legacy by collecting a pair of hits to put his career total at 2,500.

Former manager Bobby Cox was in attendance, watching his club rough up the Phillies and starter Cliff Lee—all things considered, the night was just about perfect.  Jones agreed, saying afterward, “I couldn’t have scripted it better.”

Jones became the 93rd member of the 2,500-hit club and is only the ninth switch-hitter to achieve the feat.  He’s also three RBI away from 1,500, and upon reaching that milestone, Chipper will join Eddie Murray as the only switch-hitters with that kind of production.

But as impressive as the 2,500 hits are, my first thought was of the next plateau.

Chipper Jones has played in nearly 2,300 games while compiling a lifetime .306 batting average.  And it took him this long just to get to 2,500.  In order to reach the lofty mark of 3,000 hits, he’d have to play three more seasons at his current pace.

In short, his milestone highlights how difficult it really is to get to 3,000.

Jones has hit better than .320 in a season five different times.  His best batting year came in 2008 when he led the N.L. with a .364 average.  He’s eclipsed .300 a total of 10 times.  

It would be tough to find better numbers.  Yes, he’s missed some time to injury (perhaps 1,000 at-bats’ worth), but even if he was to have those back, he’d likely still be short of the 3,000 mark.

For such an accomplished hitter to still be so far from the historic mark makes me truly appreciate how incredible 3,000 hits really is.

In the modern game’s 110-year history, only 27 players have 3,000 or more hits.

None of this is meant to detract from what Chipper has done.  The guy has been a dependable fixture in Atlanta.  He was Rookie of the Year runner-up, won an MVP, was a six-time All-Star and will almost certainly be a Hall of Fame selection.

Jones is not only one of the game’s best switch-hitters, he’s also one of the best all-around third baseman in history.  As my Bleacher Report colleague Rich Stowe points out in this piece, Chipper will probably be among the all-time top three at the hot corner when all is said and done.

But pondering his greatness and his place in the game naturally leads to thoughts of other records by other greats.

That aside, congratulations to Jones.  Here’s to one more big year. 

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Look at what fantasy baseball has done to us.  We pore over pre-season rankings, stalk the Internet for live game box scores, pray for injuries just major enough to open up opportunities for sleepers.  All in the hope of compiling enough saves to win the category.

Of course, roto leagues aren’t the only reason for the baseball-loving public’s collective love affair with closers, but they sure do bring out the fanatic in all of us.

Prior to 1969, saves weren’t even and official statistic.  Prior to 1960, they didn’t exist at all.  For roughly 70 years, the sport got along just fine without having a specific way of quantifying close-game, ninth-inning success, but in the decades since its inception, the save has come to dominate the way managers deploy pitching staffs.

As relievers became more popular in the latter half of the last century, the best arms were used more and more in high-pressure situations. Ultimately, that led to the modern “closer”, usually a bullpen’s most reliable arm that could come in and preserve ties or leads at the end of games.

With teams depending so heavily on closers, it’s not enough to have just one established guy.  Each club also needs a closer-in-waiting or two, setup men that, if needed, can step in and get the job done.

So who has staked their claim to the closer-in-waiting spot in 2011?  It’s time to review (in no particular order) the 15 best relievers who aren’t closing now, but could be in line for saves before the season is out.

Begin Slideshow

As the title suggests, there’s rampant optimism among Red Sox fans after this winter’s acquisitions. The club traded for Adrian Gonzalez, a highly-prized first baseman whom the Boston brain trust has coveted for years. That grab was followed by the signing of Carl Crawford, the former Tampa left fielder who was the top free agent available this offseason.

The team then made some other changes, bringing in Bobby Jenks and Dan Wheeler to shore up an ailing bullpen, moving Kevin Youkilis back to third base after Adrian Beltre signed with Texas, and inking a diverse supporting cast of role players.

Adding two big bats to an already productive lineup got fans excited and competitors scrambling to devise ways to combat an offense that could be historically great. It’s true that these Sox need to prove themselves on the field before we can crown them division champs (or better), but the enthusiasm is justified.

Let’s quantify just how good this offense might be.

In doing so, it’s important to remember that offensive production doesn’t necessarily equate to wins. You could have the best lineup in history and still struggle if adequate pitching isn’t in place. But this year’s Sox have an improved bullpen and a serviceable rotation. In fact, if John Lackey and Josh Beckett can rebound from last year’s poor numbers, the starting five might be among the better rotations in baseball.

So if we take it as a given that the pitching can hang in there and keep the team in games, how good might the offense be, and what might that mean for the win column?

To figure it out, I took a look at the franchise’s historical data, specifically team OPS. OPS, which is on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, is one of the better metrics at providing a snapshot of how good a player or team is (or was) at the plate.

Going all the way back to 1901, the franchise has a correlation of 0.92 between team OPS and runs scored. A value of 1.00 would have been perfectly positive, indicating that higher OPS always equates more runs scored, so a value of 0.92 is very strong. In simple terms, it’s been statistically true that the better the team does in one of those categories, the better they do in the other.

This doesn’t mean that an increase in OPS causes an increase in runs (or the other way around), but it doesn’t mean that two are connected.  So if we want to figure out how the 2011 offense might produce, we can draw some reasonable conclusions based on the OPS numbers its likely to put up.

Taking a look at the recent and career stats for each player likely to make a significant contribution, I came up with some ballpark expectations of what we might see.  

These are crude predictions; I can’t really estimate what effect the team chemistry might have, or what advantages the better players might enjoy as a result of having more big bats in the lineup. It’s also hard to determine how adjusting to Fenway will impact the newcomers. And there will almost certainly be a handful of other guys playing in a handful of games whose numbers will also factor in.

But on the whole, these are pretty defensible.

I also made some assumptions about playing time, guessing that Lowrie and Scutaro will share time at short, that Cameron and Kalish will rotate in the outfield taking some time away from Drew and Ellsbury, and that Ortiz will have some days off periodically.  In short, I applied percentages to make these 13 guys add up to nine full-time players.

The result is an estimated team OPS of .836.

So what does that mean?

These calculations assume that everyone does more or less what he’s been doing recently. At that “average” pace, the team’s OPS of .836 would be the third best in Red Sox history.

In 2003, the Sox posted an OPS of .851 while scoring 961 runs, and back in 1950 they finished with .848.  The 1950 also featured a team record 1,027 runs.

Are you starting to see what all the excitement is about?

If doing the expected could net that kind of output, what might happen if even one guy breaks out? What might happen if Big Papi repeats his .899 from last year? The 2011 season is, after all, a contract year for him. What if Gonzalez proves that Petco Park and the weak-hitting Padres were holding back and breaks the 1.000 mark? Or if Youk improves? Or if Lowrie plays well enough in the field to keep Scoots on the bench?

Just a two percent increase from these estimates would be a new all-time mark for the 110-year-old club.

All kinds of good things can happen that would make this team even better than I’m suggesting, and that, as Bostonians might say, is a wicked good thought. 1,000-plus runs is within reach, and if a few things break the team’s way, we could very well witness the best offense in Red Sox history.

And that would almost certainly lead to a playoff berth, a deep postseason run, and possibly more.

So fire up the DVR. Take some extra time off work. And plan on staying up for the West Coast games. Because it’s not too hard to imagine that 2011 might just be a record-breaking year.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com